Why is it that I stubbornly hold onto the idea that flip flops are acceptable footwear for the country?  Even after the fact that last year, I found thorns in my ff’s long enough to sew with, which had not only impaled my ff’s, but also my big toe.  Even after the fact that every time I go outside, either my kids, husband, or 100 lb. dog step on the back of them and I go hurdling through the air like a wayward stork.  Even after my toes have been permanently bruised and smashed to the point I can no longer wear boots.  Even after they make my feet look like a Neanderthal’s and I develop semi-permanent dirt stains and a callus that has to be sanded down with a belt sander.  What is the attraction?

You have to be delusional to think that flip flops are even remotely ok for any kind of task around here.  Even when I am giving hay to the animals, inevitably a piece of hay will get under my foot and jab me like a grass toothpick.  I just do not understand why I can’t grasp the reality of the situation.  Funny story…

A few years back, we had bought a house next door to us in town (see?  I don’t do well with close neighbors).  I was working on painting it one summer day (in my ff’s, of course.  Yeah, that’s safe footwear for a ladder). One of those famous Texas thunderstorms popped up out of nowhere.  I had to run back to my house to grab another brush.  The lightning and thunder were growing in intensity, so I was running (in my ff’s….stuuuuupid) and as I rounded the corner to the house, a huge crack of thunder erupted just overhead as my right foot simultaneously slid in the mud under my left leg, knocking my left foot off of the ground and I think it ended up somewhere near my left ear.  The next thing I remember, I was eating some monkey grass and dirt, still clutching my paintbrush in my right arm, which was now straightened behind my head.  I am pretty sure it was some kind of yoga pose for experts….or maybe just a nitwit.  Mind you, it is still raining (pouring) all over me, and I am now in the mud, getting wet, in a severe thunderstorm, eating grass. 

You would have thought I’d learned my lesson then.  I guess some people just never learn.